A chronicle of Issues, Studies, News and other items of interest regarding Mormonism (2006-2013)

Monday, October 02, 2006

Three's Company

Three's CompanyA TV show about one man's disparate housewivesBy JAMES PONIEWOZIKSUBSCRIBE TO TIMEPRINTE-MAILMORE BY AUTHOR

Posted Wednesday, Nov. 09, 2005The makers of HBO's Big Love, about a Utah man with three wives, saytheir drama is about the strains and compromises of family--timesthree. And sure, you want to know about that. But mainly you want toknow: How does he ... you know ... ?

The answer: Viagra. Lots of it. But stamina is only one problem thatBill Henrickson (Bill Paxton) has. He keeps his wives Barb, Margeneand Nicki (Jeanne Tripplehorn, Ginnifer Goodwin and Chlo=EB Sevigny) inadjacent houses, where they run the extended household jointly butharbor simmering jealousies. ("Officially," he tells Margene when sheasks if he missed her, "I miss you guys all the same.") He has to keepthe arrangement semisecret because polygamy is illegal in Utah andbanned by the mainstream Mormon Church, or Church of Jesus Christ ofLatter-day Saints (LDS). Oh, and one of his fathers-in-law (Harry DeanStanton), the patriarch of a fundamentalist polygamist compound, isshaking him down for a cut of his hardware business. The Osmond familythese Utahans ain't.

For a network as blue-state-oriented as HBO (each of its currentsitcoms, for instance, is about show business), Big Love is asurprising detour to the reddest of the red states. In the drama,which debuts in summer 2006, characters declare their faith as easilyas those on Deadwood swear. Co-creators Mark V. Olsen and WillScheffer, neither of whom is Mormon, say they were interested in theconflict within Bill, who came from a polygamist compound but nowlives in the mainstream suburbs of Salt Lake City. Thefundamentalists, says Olsen, see the LDS Church "as sellouts andapostates." Mainstream Mormons, he adds, "wish the compounds would goaway."

Some of them feel the same about Big Love. The church banned polygamyin 1890 and regards it as a source of wife and child abuse. The churchis concerned, says spokesman Michael R. Otterson, about the show's"making polygamy the subject of entertainment." But Scheffer says,"This show is not really about polygamy, in the same way that TheSopranos is not really about the Mob." Except that Tony Soprano onlyhas one family at home--to handle three, that takes real guts. And alittle blue pill.